On the Cusp of a Creative Breakthrough

Barbara Houshmand

Two of my best places for pondering new ideas are In the shower and In the car--there's something about the meditative state involved. I'm thinking that artists/creative people of all kinds: visual, audible, science, politics...are all pretty self-absorbed, with immutable egos we're constantly mining for the Next Big Idea. 

A Curious Mind is, above all, Very Entertaining company. That's not very Buddhist, maybe, but unraveling the Puzzles of what to do next, how to make it, is what keeps me getting up in the morning...even when what I produce is hardly marketable. That's the purest form of exploration, to be constantly unsatisfied with the last solution and restless to discover the next.

Donkeytail Euphorbia propigating

I get into trouble when I apply that attitude
to my day job, but will endeavor to keep my art part and my money-generating part separated...pretty successfully, so far, unfortunately, even when I want things to be different. Healthcare does not currently seem to be open to the Exploration of New Ideas, although it would certainly benefit, at least in the US.

I'm hoping that the constantly evolving world wide economic disaster doesn't prevent me from experiencing and participating in what's available to me here. I'm trying to walk with a small foot print, recycling George Zien's  cut out mat board pieces from framing his water colors to do my experiments in collage drawing.

Silver Collage, stage 1

I'm acting like the Outsider Artists I love in focusing all my available energy and resources in Making, rather than selling...never have been very effective at selling my work, anyway. 

I look at the world and wonder, are we the last generation, we Boomers here in the USA, 2012 AD, who can afford to be this self-indulgent? Except for the 1% and maybe not even them, the rest of the world is going to have to suffer the consequences of us taking too much, too fast, and the chain of what comes after.

I talked with the other half of the family today, celebrating our newest generation with an Iowa picnic.

Silver Collage, stage 2

My Advice, as always: Do the things you want to 
do NOW. More especially, tell the people who matter 
that you love them.


Make ART 
like there's no Tomorrow!